Category Archives: Celtic

Brother Walfrid created Celtic football club in 1888 as a funding conduit to lessen poverty in the east end of Glasgow: “A football club will be formed for the maintenance of dinner tables for the children and the unemployed.” Poverty, in whatever shape or form, was abhorrent to Brother Walfrid’s innate sense of decency. It is this core value that runs through our very veins and has been the beating heart of the Celtic diaspora, passed down from one generation to the next. We are a family because we care for each other and for those less fortunate than ourselves. For that, we are indebted to Brother Walfrid. At Celtic’s AGM, in this our celebratory 125th anniversary year, Celtic turned its back on Brother Walfrid when it rejected Resolution 11.

The demand set out in Resolution 11 was one that could have been penned by Brother Walfrid himself: that Celtic – and I do not separate club from company because we are one and the same, legally and morally – pay their low-paid workers an hourly rate that lifts them above the poverty threshold. Brother Walfrid’s Poverty Resolution, for that is what it was, fell on deaf ears and was defeated. Stunned silence does not convey the shock of that decision. Continue reading →

Twenty eight years ago today Jock Stein died. Like many football fans, I had watched the Scotland v Wales match on TV and had not realised the tragedy taking place on the side-lines as the game inched to its conclusion. Scotland’s progress towards the 1986 World Cup soon became academic as it became clear that the greatest manager in Scottish football had died.

He was a Titan of the game, leading a team of Scots to European Cup glory against the might of the Italians of Inter Milan.

I herald from a rather notorious area of religious divide, an area which even by your west of Scotland standards is something of an odd and antiquated village, rooted in a by-gone age of bitterness and resentment.

I like, JohnBhoy, had, still do and will continue to engage in constructive relations with dear friends who are considered by others within this small and closed society, as different to me, as more of ‘their own kind’ and as being more acceptable and less offensive…I am sadly, somewhat of a tarnish upon this towns self promoting image.

I abhor bigotry, I am saddened by it’s on-going presence within our society and I am ashamed by the inability of two sets of ‘supposed’ football fans to act out their rivalry in a more genuine show of mutual respect, with more humour and less hate and with an overarching ethos of healthy competitiveness and less of bitter resentment.

I must therefore congratulate JohnBhoy and the many other decent individuals, who have over the years attempted to step back from the raging inferno fuelled by bigotry and to offer something of an olive branch, a hand of friendship and a far more wholesome, pacifistic platform. Continue reading →

In yesterday’s papers up popped “the two most successful recent managers of Scottish clubs” to offer their views on the future of Scottish football for this season and beyond.

Walter Smith and Gordon Strachan spoke out through a desire to lead Scottish football on a path to recovery by talking of the positives in the game…no, hang on, they spoke as part of a promotion for Ladbrokes, whilst Mr Smith spouted doom and gloom.

Mr Strachan spoke sense and delivered what could be the epitaph for Rangers and its financial disaster, even if that was not what he intended to do.

Mr Green has promised answers to “all the questions” within seven days. I have suggested a few for him to respond to.

I also note he talks about what happens “if” the Appellate Tribunal re-convenes. I wonder of the SFA will announce soon what is happening with that. I am sure Lord Carloway has a summer holiday to go on!

It also seems to be the case, although this is not a surprise of course, that in Mr Green’s mind “the good of Scottish football” = the preservation of “Rangers”.

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Charles Green has made a couple of statements via Pravda, aka the official Rangers website.